Meditation

Meditation refers to a family of self regulation practices that focus on training attention and awareness on, for example, the breath in order to bring mental processes under greater voluntary control and thereby foster general mental wellbeing and/or development of specific capacities such as calmness, clarity and concentration' Walsh and Shapiro [2006]. There are dozens of styles of meditation and, because of this, the word 'meditation' may carry different meanings in different contexts. Meditation has been practiced since antiquity by numerous religious traditions though as a practice without religious association it has also been found to have many benefits. Many research studies have been carried out on meditation and various methods of meditation have been linked to changes in metabolism, blood pressure, brain activation, stress reduction and pain reduction to name a few.